


All that Remains

by historymiss



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, SPOILERS!!!, sad and gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 02:23:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21228233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: Ianthe bares her teeth. It isn’t a smile.Your own face is still and silent.(You deserve this. You always have)





	1. Chapter 1

The Mithraeum is big, but it isn’t big enough. Some genius has put your cell next to Tridentarius’, and even the sound of her movements is like nails down the chalkboard of your spine. You lay awake at night, just listening to her coming and going. The fall of her footsteps. The murmur of her words, as she endlessly soothes the unwilling spirit shackled to her soul.

Your own ghost is silent, and when you hear Ianthe’s voice you turn to the wall that divides you and press your hand against it, your other arm tight around your ribs as you try to keep your body from shaking apart.

She haunts your steps like a ghost. Devouring Tern might have given her all-surpassing power, but it hasn’t fixed the corpselike paleness of her skin, the anaemic fall of her hair. If anything, she looks less real than she did before, her skin a gauzy veil stretched over sharp peaks and troughs of bone, veins livid at the angular junctions of her joints.

Only her mismatched eyes are vital, twin stars that burn in her face. You want to pluck them out, crush them in your hand, and kiss the empty sockets to feel the taste of blood in your mouth.

Ianthe catches you watching her, lips slightly parted, and sneers. It’s a doubled image, a curl of a larger lip against a face that’s you’re going to see for the next myriad, for your whole life, if you are unlucky (and oh, you were born cursed, weren’t you?). 

You stand outside her doorway, one night. Your feet are bare on the bulkheads of the Mithraeum, but you don’t care. Cold is good. Cold is for corpses, mother said once, and you remember the icy bite of evenings spent running along the tracks by the snow leek fields, the misters hissing as you pass. 

The memory slips away as soon as you try to grab it. You don’t deserve her thoughts in your head. You’re not worthy of them, are you? You never were.

Ianthe opens the door as if she’s been expecting you all along. Her eyes are like twin planets in the dark, distant, alight.

_I deserve this_, you think, as you bring your hand up to caress her cheek, turn the nail inward to dig into her flesh. Just a little. Not even enough to bleed. She gasps, involuntary and soft, then shifts under your grip.

Tridentarius only touches you with her golden hand. The bones are slippery and cold and do not warm on your skin. That’s fine. You’re not born for warmth. You reached for the sun only once in your life, and it has burned you utterly. Instead, you kiss the knucklebones of her hand, caress the icy fingertips with your tongue. Ianthe half closes her eyes, and runs the slick wetness from your lips down your neck.

As it descends you give out a shuddering breath and push her away, hard. You both stand there, the first new Necrosaints in a myriad, both of you raw and powerful and broken.

Ianthe bares her teeth. It isn’t a smile.

Your own face is still and silent.

“Finally gotten over your ginger?” She licks her lips, and your fingers twitch you entertain the thought of ripping out her tongue. “I thought it’d take longer, she was quite the sight when duelling.”

“A shame you didn’t eat her yourself.” You hiss. “Then you’d only be a shitty necromancer.”

Ianthe waves her hand to bat your words away, but her right eye has rolled all the way back into her head. 

“You know where to find me.” 

You do, though tonight you return to your room, and your wards on wards of bone, and your narrow bed. 

You are a Lyctor, you have passed the test, and it is all you have ever deserved.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unexpected bonus sexy times!

You return to her, because you always do, because Ianthe, in all her awful glory, is still better than being alone.

She greets you with a slap across the face, the hard lines of her hand leaving red marks hidden in the streaks of your skull paint. Another strike and you taste blood. It’s harsh and metallic, and almost cancels out the ash on your tongue. Grabbing your chin hard enough to bruise, Ianthe tilts your face to focus on hers.

You bare your teeth, snap at the thumb she likes to slide into the corner of your mouth like a hook.

“Pathetic.” Her eyes judder and wheel in her head and she laughs, giddily, like a child. You snarl and grab her wrist, feeling the cold from the metal sink into the fevered heat of your skin.

Slowly, you force her hand down, struggle it under the layers of your robes. Ianthe fights you for the fun of it, pinning you to the wall even as a metallic finger slides past fabric and bone to the burning heart of your need.

It isn’t gentle. It’s like ice, piercing to your heart, and you close your eyes involuntarily and groan as she rotates her wrist, finds the right angle, teases you in slow circles until there’s nothing left of you but raw and panting need. When she withdraws her hand, it glistens wetly, and she runs her tongue down the golden ridges of her thumb. She savours your taste, the power it gives her.

Inside your body, you feel the aching void inside you beg _again_.

You have no spite left to force past the shame that chokes your throat. You are Harrowhark the First, ruined, and you will let Ianthe devour you as she pleases.


End file.
